1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a knowledge information processing system such as, for example, an expert system. More particularly, the invention relates to an information processing system which, upon receipt of information, for example, describing a daily living problem expressed in a natural language ordinarily used by human beings, provides knowledge or information concerning a skill which is useful in overcoming the problem. Still more particularly, the invention is concerned with a system capable of performing knowledge information processing in which information such as an instruction given by a human being, expressed by a natural language, can be formed into a sentence or text stating the content of the instruction with minimal human aid.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Daily living problems encountered in daily life, such as problems concerning child care, cooking, laundry and so forth, are overcome by knowledge derived from, for example, books, telephone counseling, data retrieval by a computer and so forth. The best way of obtaining a solution, however, is to ask an expert or someone who has abundant experience.
Information derived from various sources has its own shortcomings. Books or the like include too much information so that it is difficult to pick out the desired information. Telephone counseling involves the problem or the risk of invasion of privacy. In addition, the reply often fails to address the point in which the consulter is interested. It is therefore not overstating the case to say that a practical limit exists in obtaining information through manual labor.
On the other hand, in mechanical processing, i.e., retrieval by a computer, one encounters difficulty in selecting effective keywords from a thesaurus and, hence, is not suitable for ordinary users.
Thus, problems encounters in human daily living are intricate and involve much ambiguity. It is therefore difficult to cope with such problems.
One of the tasks that is difficult for a machine to perform is writing a text. Users are generally obliged to input most portions of the sentence to be output. In some cases, terms and phrases which are used frequently are registered and called up as required to reduce the load on the user who inputs the sentence.
Constructing a text, however, requires much labor and is quite time-consuming. The use of registered terms or phrases cannot significantly reduce the load on the user because the construction of the whole text in which these terms and phrases are to be incorporated still requires manual processing to be conducted by the user. In addition, sentences tends to become stiff due to use of the fixed terms and phrases, failing to meet a demand for adaptability to a variety of situations.